State of Phone Justice: Local jails, state prisons and private phone providers

A call from a Michigan jail costs $12 on average, and can go as high as $22 for 15 minutes (compared to $2.40 from the state’s prison system).

This policy brief from the Prison Policy Initiative provides an overview of prison and jail phone call fees and makes several recommendations to reform them. Although some state prisons have recently lowered the cost of phone calls for incarcerated people, county and city jails nationwide still charge $1 per minute or more. Charging exorbitant rates to incarcerated people can prohibit them from speaking to their lawyer, make it harder to stay in touch with family and thereby hinder efforts to post bail and/or build their defense.

Key Findings

A call from a Michigan jail costs $12 on average, and can go as high as $22 for 15 minutes (compared to $2.40 from the state’s prison system).

Phone calls from jail cost more than three times as much as phone calls from state prisons.

Although jails can negotiate lower rates, they rarely do, and many negotiate higher rates so that they can earn kickbacks.

When families pay for phone calls using money transfer services, a $25 transfer can incur as much as $10-12 in fees. To clarify, many telecommunications vendors require phone call payments to be processed through money transfer services such as JPay.

Phone providers bundle contracts (video calling, electronic tablets) with facilities in order to maintain their monopolies.